Assessment of the psychosocial work environment of professional drivers

Abstract

Aim Along with globalization in recent periods, psychosocial risks at the workplace have been classified as considerable developing risks for human mental and physical health. These risks exist both in developed and developing countries. The current study aims to assess the psychosocial work environment of professional drivers in a multidimensional concept. Subject and methods The study population consisted of 645 Iranian professional drivers. Psychosocial factors were examined in five domains including job demand, job content, interpersonal relationship, work-individual interface and general and mental health through the validated Persian medium-size version of the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ). Results Among 26 psychosocial scales, sensory demands (91.3) and cognitive demands (70.3) got the highest average scores in professional drivers. Logistic regression was applied to evaluate the association between psychosocial work environment indexes and self reported health and well being of drivers. This study showed that poor psychosocial work environment in job demand, job content, work-individual interface as well as having a car accident history was associated with unfavorable health outcomes for the participants, after adjustment for age, marital status, education level, vehicle type and smoking. Conclusion It is worth focusing on drivers' working schedule and their psychosocial work environment.

Assessment of psychosocial factors in office and operational groups of employees of a Regional Electricity Distribution Company in Iran – A case study

“…The operational employees showed higher occupational demands, especially in sensory and cognitive scales, which agreed with the results obtained in a study in Portugal (on a small sample size and using the short version of COPSOQ) [38] . In a domestic study conducted on professional drivers in 2014, occupational demand was high in sensory and cognitive scales [33] . The high level of occupational demand in operational electricity employees indicates high job sensitivity of employees and sensory and subjective needs including good eyesight and high concentration.…”

“…This resulted in scores from 0 to 500 for job demand and job content domains with five scales, 0–800 for interpersonal relationships and leadership domain with eight scales, 0–200 for person−work interface with two scales and 0–600 for the health and well being domain with six scales. A higher score indicates more unfavorable psychosocial conditions in the workplace [ 18 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 ].…”

Development of bus driving cycles using a cost effective data collection approach

“…On the other hand, numerous research studies also indicated that psychosocial work factors such as fatigue, stress and driving styles of the bus drivers are also important factors for aggressive driving behaviours. In particular, poor psychosocial work environment in job demand, job content, work-individual interface as well as having a car accident history were found to be associated with poor level of health and well-being and more stress symptoms (Aminian, et al, 2015). Another study also found that over 95% of urban bus drivers working for more than 10 hours per day would present fatigue factors related to perceptions of demands at work and exposure to environmental stressors.…”